LIC goes digital

The largest life insurance provider in the country, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is all set for a digital revolution. It is in the final stages of shortlisting companies for the tender, which is expected to be in the range of Rs 600 crore to Rs 800 crore.

Sources said Hewlett-Packard (HP) along with Mumbai-based Vakrangee Softwares, Wipro and Electronic Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and hardware major CMS Computers have bid for the project.

LIC is expected to announce the bid by month-end or early next month, which will see the digitisation of over 18 crore LIC policies and computerisation of 2,048 branches.

LIC is also planning to install scanners to convert existing policies into digital format and later archive it at a central server. All the branches would be connected to the server, which would allow them to retrieve the policies by mentioning name and number of the account-holder.

The company that bags the contract would have to complete digitisation of the corporation's existing policies (historical) in two years, apart from rolling out its Electronic Data Management Systems (EDMS) over the next seven years. LIC will award the contract after a technical and commercial evaluation process that is currently on.

LIC Chairman T S Vijayan said, "We had called for a tender three months ago and several IT majors have submitted their bids. We are negotiating with the bidders and the process is expected to be finalised within a month."

He, however, did declined to divulge the names of the companies who had bid for the project.